The Mock Trial: Revisiting a Valuable Training Strategy

The number of forensic psychiatrists has increased dramatically over the past 40 years. With this welcome development has also come some challenges for educating future generations of practitioners, specifically the greater demands on training programs and the need to divide practice hours among a larger pool of individuals. Junior trainees and experienced practitioners alike can benefit by supplementing work experience with well-designed, theoretically informed simulations. In this article, the theoretical perspectives of simulation, deliberate practice, and experiential education are discussed and linked to the design of mock trials, a form of simulation used to teach the essential skill of expert testimony. My argument is that, by explicitly linking the mock trial to learning theory, its efficacy and range of application can be increased. I provide recommendations for effective design and application.